Thou­sands of Chris­tians will be flock­ing to church­es this week­end for the an­nu­al Palm Sun­day ob­ser­vances.

Palm Sun­day or Pas­sion Sun­day is ob­served on the sixth Sun­day of Lent, the Sun­day be­fore East­er and com­mem­o­rates Je­sus’ tri­umphal en­try in­to Jerusalem, an event men­tioned in each of the four Gospels.

The Bible tells us peo­ple cut branch­es from palm trees, laid them across Je­sus’ path and waved them in the air. They greet­ed Je­sus not as the spir­i­tu­al Mes­si­ah who would take away the sins of the world, but as a po­ten­tial po­lit­i­cal leader who would over­throw the Ro­mans. They shout­ed “Hosan­na (mean­ing “save now”), blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Is­rael!”

As has be­come cus­tom­ary, Palm Sun­day ob­ser­vances in­clude the wav­ing of palm branch­es in pro­ces­sion, the bless­ing of the palms and the mak­ing of small cross­es with the palms.

The cel­e­bra­tion of Je­sus’ tri­umphal en­try in­to Jerusalem marks the start of Holy Week, which fo­cus­es on the fi­nal days of Je­sus Christ’s life.

In Trinidad, the At­talea Mari­pa or “co­corite” Palm is har­vest­ed for dis­tri­b­u­tion to the faith­ful on Palm Sun­day.

Ce­cil Toy­er, a mem­ber of the St John’s Evan­ge­lists Church who cus­tom­ar­i­ly leads the group in cut­ting the leaves, ex­plained: “You can­not get palm from the oth­er palm trees be­cause of the main fact that you have to cut the soft branch of the palm tree. The soft part of the palm tree is lo­cat­ed in the heart of the palm tree, which is in the cen­tre. Co­corite is the on­ly palm tree you could cut over and over and the tree will not die.”

Toy­er ex­plained that the trees are in­dige­nous to sev­er­al trop­i­cal South Amer­i­can coun­tries as well as T&T. They typ­i­cal­ly grow in low­land forests and undis­turbed ar­eas, on soils that are not usu­al­ly flood­ed.

As the re­porter as­signed to the sto­ry I ac­com­pa­nied the team.

The palms we went to reap grew on the side of a cliff on the North­ern Range in the vicin­i­ty of the North Post Road, Diego Mar­tin. This meant we had to ven­ture over 160 feet down the un­du­lat­ing and dan­ger­ous ter­rain to reap the leaves.

Af­ter they were cut, the palms were man­u­al­ly dragged back up the steep in­cline to the North Post Road where they were stripped.

But be­fore the strip­ping is done, they first press the young palms to the ground and bent it back and forth to “crack” it. This un­seals the shoot so the in­di­vid­ual palm leaves could be ex­tract­ed for use.

When the palms are dis­trib­uted in church­es from this af­ter­noon, many faith­ful will fold them in­to the shape of a cross, which are used in the pro­ces­sion at the church on this Palm Sun­day in a re-en­act­ment of Christ’s ar­rival in­to Jerusalem and then tak­en home where they are dis­played in cars and homes.

Some of the blessed palms which have been cut are kept. These are burnt the fol­low­ing year to be used as ash­es for the Ash Wednes­day ob­ser­vance.